Short Term Campaigns: Managing PC injuries against the clock?

[FireHive 8]

So this is my first campaign with DH. I have had an idea brewing in my mind for the last few years and have recently decided to make the dive into the handbook to get something on paper.  After acquainting myself to the rule-set, while I build my long-awaited campaign, I find a large potential problem arising. Player injury recovery time does not fit well with a short timeline campaign.

 

In a situation where players only have a few weeks time to solve an issue, and a crippling injury can take them out for most of the plot, i am struggling to find a way to keep my players "active" through the whole campaign outside replacing their characters left and right. I have read several threads on player death, and i understand it's built into the game and will happen. However, in a campaign where players may be in combat several times in a week, with little rest, stacking injuries seem justified, yet dangerously against this type of action movie theme. 

 

I am wondering if anyone has come up with intuitive solutions to deal with PC's who are knocked out of games due to injury (but will eventually return before the end).

 

I was looking for ways to have players run multiple PC's in case one is injured or unavailable for the event. However I fear the awkward possibility of both characters "on screen" at the same time would result in a player essentially talking with themselves.

 

Currently, I am leaning towards granting players twice their standard healing with no required "rest" unless the damage is critical. This recovery process can also stack with first aid tests (which function RAW) to help offset daily injuries.  

Additionally, the medical team will have made a slow release custom "Stimm" drug that lasts for 12 hours. This drug will "ignore" TB+1d5 in existing wounds when calculating new injuries, even if they have existing critical damage (to potentially avoid adding critical effects when taking damage). It will of course be highly addictive and loose potency over time.

 

If characters die, then they die, but I would prefer not to end a campaign with a completely different party than we started with.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Edited September 4, 2015 by FireHive

[Ripplo 44]

Maybe their inquisitor foresaw such a possibility and granted them some extra medicae equipment, like a special sort or extra powerful version of stimm, that let's the characters fight on...could of course lead to an addiction. If your inq. or players are radical maybe they have some powerful but tainted stimm, no addiction but gain of corruption.

[Aenno 123]

Don't forget biomancy. If you or your Inquisitor have good relations with AAT (or some rogue psykers maybe?) and nice Influence, I believe you can have psy healing.

It's kind of weak in current system though.

[Gregorius21778 249]

If the damge bothers you, why don´t you just down-scale your combat Encounters  

No, seriously. You as the GM can control such things as damage Output pretty fine. Just have a look at the armour and TB your characters have and get your NPC weapons that are a threat, but might not do a Thing about 50% off the time. In fact, I have more Problems HURTING my Players then having them damaged to much. On the other Hand, I give my Players good gear.

Back2Topic:
And that is what you could be doing as well. If you fear that the PC get hurt to much, give them Access to armour about one Point better then what they are currently wearing. Or even two.

If armour is not the Problem, but how the damage will sum up over a the numerous battles..make the battle less numerous! Turn some gunfights into chases, where the confronted cultists do not stand and fight but rather run for their lives

If all of this is not the answer you are locking for, bring a medi-skull along. My Group was gifted with a medical servo skull right from the start in DH1st and since me as the GM was making the roles for the litter bugger, I could make sure the med tests went like I wanted them to go.

If push Comes to shove & you are found of giving your Players some "Chose your poison" Options: insert a "40k-magic-healing-drug" that demands them to rest like they would have critical damage, but makes them heal as quickly like they were lightly damaged...produces one Level of fatigue that wears of a Point by DAY. And every additional use with (8 minus TB) weeks leads to the permant loss of 1d5 of Toughness. Give the drug a very high rarity (explaining why not everyone is using it) and you are fine to go.

If all else Fails and they do get critical damage...bump them up on Morphin (so the negative effects don´t Count), ask for a Toughness test each day the walk around (another critical if they fail..they were meant to stay in bed, damnit) and heroically handwave through the rest. It is the grimy-grimdark 40k, give your PC some suffering.

...but really, just tone down the amount of combat Encounters, and you will befine




 

[InquisitorAlexel 244]

Tell them, at the start of the game, that they'll to play intelligently because they won't have much time to recover. It will be relentless.

 

Many of my games happen in short period of times and then, after the mission, they get out and then they heal (a little). Players are used to be in deep sh*t when they act rambolike and so, will prepare for their fights.

 

 

 

o, seriously. You as the GM can control such things as damage Output pretty fine. Just have a look at the armour and TB your characters have and get your NPC weapons that are a threat, but might not do a Thing about 50% off the time. In fact, I have more Problems HURTING my Players then having them damaged to much. On the other Hand, I give my Players good gear.

 

Yep, pistol and bolt-action carbine would do well to limit the number of damage they can do in a round, letting the players have enough dodges and soak to tank this a bit. First aid then become handy, without big wounds, your characters should be able to heal the little damages suffered in the last battle.

 

 

 

I was looking for ways to have players run multiple PC's in case one is injured or unavailable for the event. However I fear the awkward possibility of both characters "on screen" at the same time would result in a player essentially talking with themselves.

 

I did that once, and it went very well. The rule was: you've got your primary characters, and two rank 1 acolytes with you (players were rank 5, in DH1). The rule was: your two "minions" had to be a little stereotypical in their personnality. When the player was in the same room than his secondary character, I took up the playing of the minion when useful. It went pretty good and transformed the game in a very deep roleplay experience.

 

But it is more work for you, but worth it. It would give "second chances" to wounded players.

[FireHive 8]

Really liking the idea of playing with addiction and endurance.

 

Forcing an endless choice between rest and taking yet another hit of slow-release Stimm and/or morphine to pursue a timely lead. Ideally, characters will never have time to recover fully making encounters more and more risky (though weapon damage will be controlled and individual encounters on the easy side). For my group of mainly DnD (combat-loving) friends, it will be a nice learning experience in the importance of non-combat characters and their influence/persuasiveness.

The fatigue and pain will also help push the insanity track for some as they try to deal with the stress.

 

Lastly it could provide a bit of comedy in the event the team must infiltrate an aristocratic event while drugged up/tweaking.

 

I think I'll tweak my rules for a slow release stimm and morphine (1 will ignore existing wounds for the purpose of calculating future damage and the other will boost Toughness tests and Bonus's for avoiding damage all together). Of course  they will increase fatigue, slowly reduced potency, and be highly addictive really raising the stakes of the mission over time.

Edited September 4, 2015 by FireHive

[FireHive 8]

 

I did that once, and it went very well. The rule was: you've got your primary characters, and two rank 1 acolytes with you (players were rank 5, in DH1). The rule was: your two "minions" had to be a little stereotypical in their personnality. When the player was in the same room than his secondary character, I took up the playing of the minion when useful. It went pretty good and transformed the game in a very deep roleplay experience.

 

But it is more work for you, but worth it. It would give "second chances" to wounded players.

 

Glad to hear it wasn't awkward. What I may do is ask them to roll a second character if they loose a limb or something particularity grave and I introduce them in a natural way. Then, as the player finally heals, the PC can choose to jump back to their original build or leave them while I NPC the other for future sessions. It could give me the ability to create great moments by capturing/Killing a former PC that the group is actually emotionally invested in rather than some "important" NPC no one has met.

Edited September 4, 2015 by FireHive

[cpteveros 255]

Or you could just hand-wave some of the healing times. The rules in the WH40k books on injury tend to contradict themselves, so I usually just do whatever fits the story best. Narrative time is best for this, obviously, as you don't want the PCs getting injured and forced out of the campaign.

 

Maybe a broken arm requires a day to visit the Medicae and get it bound - doing so gets them back into the game, but means that they may miss out on a potentially valuable clue or opportunity. You don't want it to feel like you're punishing them, but ideally they would have to choose between trying to avoid combat or risk injury in battle.

[Lynata 2,228]

Personally, for the really critical cases, I'd tend towards replacement characters -- although I'd also make it dependent on player reception. Not everyone would like the idea, whereas others could embrace it. Perhaps the campaign has already yielded a number of interesting NPCs and a player would jump at a chance to slip into their shoesboots?

 

But what kind of injuries are we talking about, precisely? There might be nothing wrong with a broken arm per se -- representing an active character with such an injury could even make for a nice bit of roleplaying, involving various details such as having to use their other hand for things, or complaining when someone bumps the injured part of their body. The use of drugs to neuter the pain also seems very fitting for 40k, as has been said before.

 

No reason to "cheat" with combat encounters or healing times, imho!

[Skarsnik38 100]

A PC Chirurgeon can pretty effectively deal with this problem. With the superior chirurgeon talent, high intelligence, a few ranks in medicae, some gear and the chirurgeon role ability (pretty much all of which a character can start with) they can even treat critical injuries pretty easily. Might require a player focusing heavily on keeping the others alive but that can be fun.

Limb loss and other such severe critical results will still be a problem and may just require replacment characters or fudging of bionic replacement times. You could also perhaps allow the burning of fate to avoid an injury that would take them out of the campaign just like they could if they suffered a fatal blow. Just have them rendered unconsious and survive the fight and not suffer the long term effect of the critical hit.

[Bilateralrope 144]

Also remember that the final boss doesn't need to be a combat monster. It could just be a human with a lot of followers, with bodyguards that are less capable in combat than foes the PCs have already killed. Partly because they are loyal, partly because the combat monsters are more useful to him elsewhere because he thinks himself too well hidden to ever get attacked.

 

So when the players reach this charismatic human the fight could be the easiest encounter they have had while going after him. 

[madMAEXX 84]

Limb loss and other such severe critical results will still be a problem and may just require replacment characters or fudging of bionic replacement times. You could also perhaps allow the burning of fate to avoid an injury that would take them out of the campaign just like they could if they suffered a fatal blow. Just have them rendered unconsious and survive the fight and not suffer the long term effect of the critical hit.

Or just have a medic bolt on a low quality augmetic leg, because it's the only one available. Then inject him with stim and some healing chems to let him be active with the freshly implanted leg.

The doc/Inquisitor/AdMech promises to get him a better quality leg as soon as possible, but that may take some days.

Edited September 4, 2015 by madMAEXX

[Skarsnik38 100]

 

Limb loss and other such severe critical results will still be a problem and may just require replacment characters or fudging of bionic replacement times. You could also perhaps allow the burning of fate to avoid an injury that would take them out of the campaign just like they could if they suffered a fatal blow. Just have them rendered unconsious and survive the fight and not suffer the long term effect of the critical hit.

Or just have a medic bolt on a low quality augmetic leg, because it's the only one available. Then inject him with stim and some healing chems to let him be active with the freshly implanted leg.

The doc/Inquisitor/AdMech promises to get him a better quality leg as soon as possible, but that may take some days.

 

That's pretty much what I meant by fudging the replacment times. By RAW all bionic installations, even terrible poor quality ones, take 2d10-Tb in days. So you could shorten the time and explain it as being a rush job like you said with the replacement having the downsides of being poor quality (maybe not even being poor quality but just counting as such for awhile) and perhaps having some other downsides for the lack of recovery time and adjustment time for learning how to use the bionic properly.

You could also have degrees of success on a medicae test to install the bionic subract days from the installation/recovery time as well making it 2d10-Tb-DoS. 

[Lynata 2,228]

There are some cheaper, quicker alternatives to bionics, too.

 

 

[madMAEXX 84]

A player in our round actually had a wooden leg implanted, because it had to go really fast. The Inquisitor promised to get a better leg as soon as they were back in the HQ. He kept the promise.

[DarkSolstice 9]

the real problem i think is when your roll on critical dmg tables and you get results like broken legs etc. well you could tone down the critical table a bit plus make them the actuall heroes. havent you seen a movie that the main character gets a bullet in the leg but 5 minutes later he can still run like hell. well they are the heroes they can roll a toughness roll and ignore some of the drawbacks. also give them options so they can overcome an encounter easier. lets say 10 guards on a corridor is pretty hard. but if some of them where to be drawn away it would make overcoming the rest much easier. reward them with this kind of thinking. even let them talk themselves out of a situation!

Edited November 5, 2015 by DarkSolstice

[Newfish 7]

Instead of having the players create another backup character, can you not Requisition NPCs as in the rulebook?  They wouldn't get XP, but they can be recurring characters every time **** goes down.  
Enemies Without even has rules for requisitioning playable Orks and Eldar!

[MijRai 196]

Yeah, if you have a Chiurgeon on hand to provide medical care, they'll be able to take a lot more punishment and push through (at least once a day, that is).  I've got a Medicae-focused Tech-Priest in my game, all the way up to Magos Biologis right now.  I've killed a total of ONE primary PC in the eight months we've been playing, definitely thanks to his ministrations.  The only one who did die took too much damage at once to be saved (that was a warp incursion with far too many tentacles for comfort).  

 

If they're getting a little TOO banged up, toss a doc their way after a scrape to patch them up, give them some medical supplies and have fun!